A fire Saturday night at City Walk Apartments caused extensive damage to one of the buildings in the complex on East Bryant Street but no one was injured.
Central dispatch received a call at 8:28 p.m. that a fire had started in apartment 6.
Members of the Smithville Volunteer Fire Department rushed to the scene and found flames coming from one of the upstairs apartments, according to Fire Chief Charlie Parker. “When we arrived we found flames coming from the roof and the window of an upstairs apartment. We tried to get into it as quick as we could to try and make a stop on it to keep it from going any further. The fire got up into the attic area and there’s some roof additions on the side of the building that made the fire difficult to reach,” said Chief Parker.
“The fire started in one of the upstairs apartments and then it moved over into the one beside of it. One apartment, where the fire started, is totally destroyed and the other is pretty extensively damaged with no ceiling or roof. There is also some water damage in a couple of apartments below on the first floor. There are eight apartments altogether in this building, four on each side. Four of them have been affected. The other four have not been damaged by fire or water but could have some smoke,” said Chief Parker.
Smithville Police were among the first to arrive on the scene and made sure the apartments were evacuated. “The police department got here before we did and evacuated three of the four apartments in this building and made sure everybody got out,” said Chief Parker.
The cause of the fire has not been determined, according to Chief Parker. “We do know it started in an upstairs apartment but we’re still looking into it,” he said.
Although the ceiling fell through in one of the apartments while firefighters were in there making the attack, no one was hurt.
Because the fire was difficult to reach in some places, Chief Parker said firefighters made use of a Smithville Electric System bucket truck which was on the scene.”The way the roof is straight up on the sides, Smithville Electric was here with their bucket truck so we used them to get over in the top so we could get to where the fire was on the roof. It had already burned through in a couple of spots so we used them so we could get in there to it,” said Chief Parker.
DeKalb EMS was also on the scene.